Claims Department 16

The Smiths Claims Department There is a scene in High Fidelity that is really interesting to me. Not because it’s a particularly well-done scene, or really a particularly memorable movie overall, but because it completely encapsulates what music means to me. The main character, Rob Gordon, is at an all-time low, and a friend comes over and he explains that he’s been re-organizing his record collection. He explains that he’s been organizing his music collection autobiographically, according to the connection and effects on his life. This is exactly how I view music in my life. It is not so much the music, but the influence, the connection of the music, to every other part of my life experience. Let me start with a truth. I know nothing about music. That’s not to say I know nothing about Music History, I have a general idea about the progression of popular music in America over the last hundred or so years. I know a fair bit about how the Music Industry grew, about the rise of Jazz out of New Orleans, Chicago, New York, Kansas City, St. Louis. I am pretty knowlegdable about the birth, branding, and conquest that is Rock ‘n Roll, and am a Curator-level expert on a few sub-genres (Ska, Lounge, being the two big ones) and while I’m usually at least a year behind nowadays, I try to keep up. But I really know nothing about MUSIC. Have no clue about how music is made, what certain things mean, about terminology, about tone and mood and scales and modes and on and on and on. I just don’t understand that stuff. I get the songs, I get albums, I get the effect that music has on me, on my personal history and philosophy, but I don’t actually get the music. It is probably a side-effect of being completely tone-deaf. Now, a part of this has to do with a fellow BArean named Janice Whaley. She’s actually from San Jose, the city I spend a lot of my time in. She stopped singing for a while, but then decided to go back and do a one-year project where she recorded versions of every song in The Smiths songbook. She called it The Smiths Project, www.thesmithsproject.com. Every one, and she did it in a year. She also used no instruments other than her voice and tape loops. Well, that’s what they would have been back in the day, but the idea is the same. So, she recorded these amazing, deeply layered, beautifully produced renditions of every song The Smiths ever produced. It’s incredible, and it inspired me to do this issue, where I look at how every Smiths track on their 4 canonical records (and a few singles-only releases) and explain how it collides with my life, sometimes literally, sometimes with a layer or two of distance, and sometimes in ways that kinda scare me. As an example of the way coincidence in my life works, I present how I learned of The Smiths Project. I had just finished watching Evelyn, had made lasagna for her and her mom, and left, but wanted to be out of the house for a while, so I went to Streetlight records. While I was at Evelyn’s, we had watched an episode of Psych, starring James Roday and Dule Hill. It was the episode where there is a “Killer in the House” mystery that featured folks Letters & Stuff? [email protected] from the movie Clue, as well as Curt Smith, from Tears for Fears. I got in a bit of a foam, because it’s been a long time since I listened to any T4F, so I slid it into the CD player in my car and was rocking out to Mad World on the way to Streetlight. On the seat next to me was the Psych tie-in novel A Fatal Frame of Mind. I walked into the store, and while looking for some more Tears for Fears, I saw a plastic divider labeled The Smiths Project. I’ve always loved the Smiths, so I took a look and noticed that on one of them was a blurb from Curt Smith! That was awesome! I bought it and took it into the car. As always, when I’ve bought a CD, I open it up and take a look at any liner notes. I noticed that in the list of Producers was the name James Roday. James Roday who plays Shawn Spencer on Psych. I would later discover that Janice and James had even recorded a version of Ideas as Opiates for Curt Smith’s 50th birthday. Weird... I love those old Smiths covers, so often a wash over-top of an image from a 1950s or 60s movie. I decided for this one, to give the treatment to Kenneth Anger, a former LASFSan, a friend of Forry, a filmmaker whose documentaries are so significant to the development of not only Queer Cinema, but to Festival Cinema and the New American film of the 1960s and 70s. Plus, I just like that color. I would have loved to have been the guy who did the covers for the originals. First off, it would have meant going through a lot of film stills from a period when they knew how to do stills. Of course, there is a question that has to be asked, and possibly answered. Why The Smiths? They never had a Number One Hit anywhere, never had a Top Ten in the US. Yeah, they became a massively important part of the musical landscape, influenced two generations of musical acts. There is a tradition in the UK, it’s lasted every since The Smiths broke up, where the media is looking for The Next Smiths. This issue isn’t normal. It’s not a look at the music of the Smiths, though there’s a little of that in these pages, and it’s not about their influence. It’s about what The Smiths mean to me, how the songs did what they did. in my head, and some where the song is only there. PLUS, there are a couple of things that just came to my mind. And so, now the random connections, tangential stories, amusing implications and whatnot of The Smiths’ music on the life and times of Christopher J Garcia Artist Credits Ditmar - Pages 10, 15, 17, 33, 39, 44, 61, 72 Michele Wilson - 19, 22, 34, 35, 54, 58, 59 Linda Wenzelburger - 30 The Smiths - Released February 20th, 1984 by Rough Trade (Sire Records in the US) Track 1 - Reel Around the Fountain (5:58) The sad thing is sometimes, these songs become quantum entangled with moments of deep sadness. I can name you a hundred songs that are permanently attached with death for me, including several that will be included here, but this one, this one is almost darker. SaBean’s not had it easy, between certain familiarities with certain substances, certain people, certain activities. She always kept her head about her, in a completely reckless way, but she was always guiding herself, even if it was towards destruction. “Reel Around the Fountain” is perhaps one of The Smiths’ darkest songs. Read one way, it’s a story of a chicken hawk and the young victim his hawking who is convinced that he’s in love with him. Another reading, that it is a young gay man who doesn’t truly come to the discovery of his sexuality until an older man takes him. So, when I walked into SaBean’s apartment one evening and saw her sitting on the floor, wearing only a slightly too large tank top. She was expecting me. She’d known I was coming for almost a week. The movie was in an hour. She was sitting there, completely un-done. I’d seen her in this state many, many times before, but never with that look on her face. That look that had nothing behind it. She was just staring, without emotion or connection. She hadn’t ever seemed to recognise that I opened the door. “Hey.” I said, already worried. She didn’t answer. “Hey, we still going to see Leaving Las Vegas?” I said. She finally definitively looked at me. “It’s stronger than I am.” SaBean said. “What is?” “All of it.” When a junky says something like that to you, you have to take the conversation a certain direction. “That your first step? You wanna make 11 more?” I said. “That’s not what I’m saying. It’s stronger than me. I can’t fucking play in that field anymore. It’s gonna kill me.” “Still soundin’ like the start of a trip to NarcoNon.” “I’ve done serious shit to my body. Serious shit.” “Ballet’s a gateway drug, darlin’.” “It really is, Chris.” For a moment, her eyes got dark and clear. “You want to stop using?” I stupidly asked. “No, I just want to be stronger.” And with that, she stood up, walked over to me, wrapped her arms around me, and just sorta hung there. She didn’t fall to her knees, in fact she transferred 0 weight to me. She just lightly put her arms me, still staring into the area by the door. It was as if she wasn’t there. It was as if she were made of air. I hadn’t noticed that she was listening to The Smiths, and in particular, “Reel Around the Fountain” was on repeat, it seemed.

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